EVAPORATION AND AGRICULTURE.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 341, 1 March 1911, Page 7

EVAPORATION AND AGRICULTURE.

Evaporation plays a very large part in all agricultural processes. The rapidity with which evaporation goes on determines to a large extent the rapidity of growth. It should be evident to any person that the building up of a plant can progress only as fast as the food can be carried to it, and this food can be carried only as fast as the water moves in the plant, as all plant food is held in solution in the liquid that carries it. The evaporation from the surfaces of the plant supplies the motive power for the liquid that is in the internal portions of the plants. If the day is a hot one, and the atmosphere is dry, the drying up of the moisture on the plant leads to the instant supply of more moisture by tb.3 plant, and this is an important factor in the process of sap movement. That is the reason that in humid climates where the sky is obscured by clouds for a large part of the time, the processes of growth are so slow that many things fail to ripen in an ordinary season. Die farmer sometimes complains «.t a long period of unclouded sky ; but if his plants have enough water to supply their needs they are ma.kiug an unusually rapid growth in tfcp. time in which they are receiving an unusual amount of sunshine.